


Gethsemane

by LaVoileBlanche



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: ??? - Freeform, Confession, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, The Undead Prophet is mentioned but not actually present, antiques roadshow bc why not, spoilers for season/series 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 18:06:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3178085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVoileBlanche/pseuds/LaVoileBlanche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...He doesn't know if it is just a self-destructive instinct leftover from his past life that means he has to shatter this peace but he knows, suddenly, that it is time for his confession.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gethsemane

Simon rose from the grave with an empty space inside of him. The Prophet filled that space with tales of redemption and divinity, but the Prophet betrayed him when he demanded Kieren’s blood, and now Simon is full of faith that has nowhere to go, with no way of conducting it from him except through Kieren.

He’d always thought he’d be nothing without the psalms and the verses the Prophet left him, or worse, less than nothing - without the Scripture embossed on his tongue, he was scared he’d become again a nameless, homeless, worthless junkie. But Kieren, Kieren dismisses all talk of God and everything holy, disregards Simon’s sermons with a scoff, has no patience to hear about Revelations, and _still_ sticks around, as if Simon has something more to offer him. As if beneath the veneer he has built on holy ground, Kieren has seen something worth pursuing. Simon, who has never seen this thing within himself, wonders how he could have been expected to do anything but fall in love with this boy.

And he has. Simon is in love with every inch of him, every centimetre - the lolling tongues of his funny black boots, the crescents of blackness on each of his fingernails; above that, his lips, like violets against the pallor of his grey-white skin, his hair, the colour of autumn leaves. Simon thinks he has been in love with Kieren Walker since he saw him in the graveyard, and was only too blind to see it straight away.

So, he thinks, he has catching up to do.

Kieren is sitting on the sofa, socked feet curled underneath him, sketchbook in his lap. The TV is on so quietly that they couldn't hear it if they wanted to, and Simon is sitting on the floor, counting his blessings. One, Kieren's coltish, flutelike bones, settled and content less than half a room away. Two, the bungalow that Amy left them, the ghost of her a warmth filling empty corners. Three, a chance at redemption.

“If I had gone to Paris before you and Amy came here,” Kieren starts, voice cracking the still quiet of the room. Simon looks up from where he’s been pretending not to watch him draw. He thinks he can see the waves of Amy’s hair taking shape under the pencil. “how would we have met?”

This is a game they play. _If I’d stayed in America, if I’d gone to art school, if Rick hadn’t died…_

(This, and another - _what do you miss?_

Kieren says, without hesitating, “Tea,” and Simon scoffs and teases him for being so predictably English.

“Alright, then, Mr. High-and-Mighty, what would _you_ choose?”

Simon’s first thought is of the numbness that followed the push of a needle into his wrist, but he doesn’t miss the drugs, not really. He’s found a better kind of addiction in Kieren - though, with Zoe and her inherited followers skulking about, it might prove just as destructive.

“Fish and chips.” He says instead, and determinedly doesn’t think of his father.)

“If you’d gone to Paris,” Simon says, “I would’ve been on the plane next to you, and you would’ve asked me about my book.”

Kieren’s lips quirk.

“Or,” he keeps going, “you would’ve been drooling on my shoulder, and I would've had to wake you up when we reached the airport.”

Kieren snorts, nudges Simon with his foot.

“I do not _drool._ ” He says. Simon knows. He’d just wanted to make him laugh.

“No, you don’t.” Simon agrees. It's still a wonder that he is allowed to know this, that Kieren has allowed him this insight.

He doesn't know if it is just a self-destructive instinct leftover from his past life that means he has to shatter this peace but he knows, suddenly, that it is time for his confession.

"Kieren," he says, voice soft, and Kieren looks at him, guileless, wide eyes expectant. Simon has heard his family call him Kier and the scrawl on the cave wall says Ren but to Simon he is never anything less than the two combined, Kieren Kieren Kieren, as if splitting one syllable from the other is an act of vandalism, mutilation, blasphemy. "I need to tell you somethin'."

He feels like all the love inside of him is outsizing his body, like at any moment it could burst out of him and leave him nothing more than a hollowed-out shell in the middle of the street, all his insides carved out and devoured by a love he can't hope to contain. He thinks that should bother him more than it does, but he's given himself to so many things before Kieren that it's a relief, now, to have something given back.

Kieren looks, to him, like an idol, sitting silver and gold on Amy's floral-print cushions and waiting for him to speak through his throat gone suddenly dry. He needs to tell him, there is no part of him that doubts this, but there is dust on his tongue where the words should be.

"Simon?" Kieren asks, concern furrowing his brow. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Simon says, no more than a breath. "No, I'm fine. I just - I gotta tell you somethin', and I don't know how."

There's a flicker of understanding that crosses Kieren's face and Simon's sure that his heart would be trying to push out of his chest if it was still beating at all.

"Is it about the ULA?"

Simon huffs a laugh that's almost more despair than humour, because Kieren has no idea at all, and Simon, thief and traitor and would-be killer, is going to take that from him.

"Sort of," he replies. "You know they don't, ah, like me, anymore."

An understatement. When he had last walked by Zoe in the street, she had spat onto the path between his feet.

"You're almost as bad as the pulse-beaters," she'd said, _"Judas."_

Kieren nods.

"I'd noticed." He says. The stencil on the wall of the bungalow was scraped away before Amy's wake, and Kieren had only reacted with raised eyebrows.

"There's a reason." Simon says, and gets no further until Kieren, clearly waiting for more, rolls his eyes, as if to say, _c'mon, get it over with._ Simon wishes it were that easy, but he is aware that every word out of his mouth now is a step away from this beautiful tragic boy who he doesn't deserve but wants anyway.

"I had a mission." He starts. He hears his own voice as if he's underwater. It sounds strange and far away, his throat like sandpaper, the words grating on their way out. He looks at his hands."He - the Prophet - gave me a mission."

"That's why you were in Roarton," Kieren guesses. "Amy -" the barest catch in his voice - "Amy said she had a mission, too. That's why she came back."

"She didn't know what I was doing," he says. Amy cannot be tarnished by this thing that he has done - or almost done. "I didn't tell her."

Kieren has pinned him with the full force of his attention now, and every word he forces out between his teeth puts up a fight.

"What were you doing, Simon?" Kieren asks, quiet.

"I was supposed to find the First Risen. I - the Prophet - he told me that in Roarton I would find the first of us to Rise, and that they would be our saviour." He gives a bitter twist of his mouth that cannot be called a smile. The Prophet talked about redemption with no knowledge of what it meant. Simon only knows now what it means, all the ways in which a person can be saved. "That they would bring about a Second Rising."

On the sofa, Kieren is utterly still. Simon does not even think he is breathing. But Simon can no more stop talking now than turn the clock back and prevent it all from happening to start with.

"Do you remember," he begins, knowing that Kieren must, "that lunch with Gary and your parents? And you told that story, that beautiful story, Kieren, about when you Rose, and -"

"- And you asked me about the other graves. You asked me if I was alone." There is a tone of dawning comprehension in his voice, dawning horror. Simon closes his eyes for a moment, wishes himself back in time and a million miles away, wishes to never have touched Kieren's life and to stop this hurt. _If wishes were horses..._

"And you told me you were. And I thought that I had done what they told me to do without even trying. I thought that you were the First Risen, and it was incredible, Kieren. You cannot imagine what it felt like to know it was you, _you_ , when you were already so special, so important... To think that on top of it all, you would save us, that was the greatest moment of my life - of all of my lives."

He dares a glance at Kieren then, but cannot read his face.

"So I told them. And they told me to go to the city and receive my next instructions, my next mission. And I did, Kieren, because after I came back, they were the only family I had." He has to try, just this once, to make Kieren understand what the ULA gave to him after his father turned him onto the streets. It is a selfish plea for forgiveness that he knows he doesn't deserve.

"The Prophet," he says, weighing each word on his tongue. This is the last hurdle, the final judgement, "told me that in order for the Second Rising to begin," he breathes in, holds it. He has never felt so close to hell than in this hanging pregnant pause. "the First Risen had to die."

He hears Kieren draw a sharp breath, and closes his eyes again.

"They gave me a knife, and left me to complete my orders." Simon can still hear the warped voice on the television screen, _sacrificed_ , as if Kieren was just a lamb raised for the slaughter, just a tool in some cosmic order and not the alpha and omega of Simon's universe. "And I came back here and followed you to the graveyard and saw you, and the knife was in my _hand,_ Kieren."

"You were supposed to kill me." Kieren's voice is hollow and strikes like a match, right against Simon's bones. "You should have killed me."

Simon looks up at him, stricken.

"No." He says. He has never been more certain of anything. "No, Kieren. There is _nothing,_ no Second Rising, that could have made it worth it. I wasn't supposed to kill you. You weren't supposed to die. It was delusional."

"Christ, Simon." That voice again, pitched all wrong against Simon's nerves. Anger there, and confusion. Simon wants to reach out to him but he is frozen waiting for Kieren's wrath to pour itself onto his back, and can do nothing but sit and wait, every cell of him aching towards the boy who has lurched upright to stand, now, before him. "I nearly killed my _dad,_ and you saw Gary and you could've _stopped_ him, and it was your Blue Oblivion anyway -"

This is news to Simon. It raps hard against his ribcage and splits it open. What forgiveness can he ask for, in the face of this?

"- and this is what Amy died for, this is why Maxine killed her." Kieren looks torn and frayed, looks fragile, standing in the middle of the room. He runs a hand through his hair.  
  
"Christ, Simon." He repeats, and collapses back onto the sofa.

Simon does not move, not even to chance a look at him, and there is silence for a long time, until, eventually -

"Why didn't you do it." Kieren demands. Simon feels like he will never answer a more important question than this.

"I _couldn't_ do it." He thinks that he has more to say, but finds nothing. He couldn't kill Kieren because it was impossible, because in all his years there has never been anything as important as the life of the golden boy on the sofa, because Kieren made him into the kind of person he thinks he can live with, the kind of person he might enjoy being.

"Would you have done it, if it had been someone else?" Kieren asks. Of course he does, because he wouldn't be Kieren if he didn't.

"I don't know." Simon wishes he could explain the way the Prophet had of digging into your bones and weeding out the doubt and fear until you would walk through fire to please him. He doesn't know if he would have fought it, for anyone but Kieren. His hands, in front of him, are clasped tight together like a hymn. He thinks that if Kieren leaves now he will stay there forever with his prayer-filled hands like Moses on the hill, waiting for him to come back until he turns to dust.

Kieren doesn't say anything for a long, long time. Simon thinks that he was denied Judgement when he died and so he will receive it now from Kieren's lavender mouth. He prays, and hates himself for the selfishness of it. _Please don't leave me, please, please, fucking please._

"You saved my life."

The words are so unexpected that Simon is sure he must have imagined them. They drag his head upwards and he looks at Kieren with his brow furrowed in confusion.

"What?" He asks. Kieren looks at him steadily and swallows, as if he needs to weigh the words.

"You saved my life." He repeats. "Pearl was going to shoot me in the head and you jumped in front of the bullet. You stopped her."

Simon doesn't understand where Kieren is going with this.

"...yes?" He says.

"Why? You could have let her do your job for you."

The concept is so repugnant that Simon rejects it out of hand.

"No." He says, shaking his head. "No, Kieren."

"You would have been a hero," Kieren keeps going as if Simon hasn't spoken. "with the ULA. They would have welcomed you back with open arms."

Simon is still shaking his head.

"No." He says. He keeps imagining it, seeing Kieren spread-eagled on the cold ground with a hole in his head, eyes like snowflakes staring upwards at an unsympathetic sky. "No, I couldn't let that happen, Kieren."

He feels sick, which doesn't make sense with their biology, but he does, he feels physically sick. He looks at Kieren with his eyebrows creased under the pain of it and Kieren is just looking back at him, inscrutable, and then, suddenly - always, _always_ so suddenly, Simon never sees it coming - he surges forward and grabs the front of Simon's jumper and he's kissing him, hard. Simon's hands jump apart and hover near Kieren's ribs because he still doesn't know if he's allowed to touch, and then Kieren pulls back and sits heavily down on the sofa again.

"You saved my life when you should have killed me." He says, like it's an explanation. Simon stares. Kieren cannot, cannot have a heart this big, there is no world in which Simon can deserve this, it is too much.

Kieren, it seems, can read these thoughts on his face, because he rolls his eyes and takes Simon's face in his hands and kisses him again, softer this time.

"It's okay." He says, then seems to think about it, and revises, "Well, it's not _okay,_ but you're not the only person in the world who's tried to kill me. You're not even the only person in a five-mile radius."

_"Kieren."_ Simon says, without knowing precisely why. It's like a plea for him to stop being so cavalier, or a warning telling him to run away from Simon as fast as he can and never stop because he's just _toxic_ \- and Kieren just rolls his eyes again.

_"Simon."_ He mimics. "Get over yourself."

And that seems to be the end of it, as far as Kieren is concerned, because all he does is pull Simon's arm until he moves on auto-pilot, and sits down next to him.

Simon is reeling. Simon cannot imagine that this is anything less than a callous practical joke, than a new torture devised to punish him for all his manifold sins. He doesn't dare to breathe until Kieren elbows him in the ribs.

"Stop being an idiot and pass me the remote." He says.

"Kieren, I nearly killed you." Simon says, vaguely desperate because he must have missed it, somehow, must have misunderstood what he meant.

"But you didn't." Kieren says simply, but when he looks at Simon he's uncompromising. "Now give me the remote. If I have to watch one more episode of _Antiques Roadshow_ , I'll get Pearl to finish the job myself."

"Please don't joke." Simon says. Pleads, really. He can still picture his brilliant eyes turned cold and dead like broken eggs, and black blood splattered on a tombstone. Kieren must hear something in his voice because he sounds serious when he says,

"Sorry."

He pushes his feet into Simon's lap like an apology, and Simon's hands settle on the fine bones of his ankles mechanically. He cannot stop staring at him.

"Kieren Walker." he says. The wonder in his voice, on his face, would be obvious to the deaf and blind and dumb, he's sure. Kieren looks at him with a faint discomfort like he always gets when Simon tells him what a miracle he is, but he still can never stop himself.

If he is the Prophet's Judas then by all rights he does not deserve this absolution, but not even the most damned beggars in the Bible turned away blessings like the sight of Kieren Walker, marble and gilt in the soft pink-and-orange glow of the sunset, and Simon will not, either.

The peace somehow, remarkably, settles back over them like nothing has changed, and Simon thinks that all his lessons in reverence were wasted until he met this boy.

**Author's Note:**

> Haha so Simon Monroe is still breaking my heart, what's new. Gethsemane is the name of the place where Jesus prayed the night before his crucifixion and also where Judas betrayed him, so that's the reason for that.
> 
> If you liked this, comment, kudos, bookmark, whatever. If you want to cry over these stupid undead losers, I'm on tumblr at www.queer-z0mbies.tumblr.com. See you there, maybe.


End file.
